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Meteorite Destroys Warehouse In Auckland, NZ
vik writes "According to local media, multiple eye witnesses are reporting that a meteorite crashed into a warehouse in Auckland, New Zealand last night, setting it on fire. The warehouse roof was destroyed but no nearby buildings were damaged and there was only one minor casualty — a man who happened to be inside the building at the time. The fire service have not yet made an official announcement."
Minor injury... sure.
But minor casualty????
Any connection to Palin's church?:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/13/palin.church/index.html
Table-ized A.I.
[citation needed]
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Some people were convinced the fire was caused by what may have been a meteorite, which was seen from various parts of the upper North Island streaking across the sky just after 10 o';clock.
Several callers claim the light in the sky was very bright, and it was described by some as a blinding flash. Others said it was trailing smoke.
One man, Mike, says he saw the object crash with an exploding noise in the Ponsonby area, and reckons it could have started the fire.
To summarize, a meteorite was seen, and may have even crashed in this area. That is all.
Do insurance companies cover stuff like this?
Depends entirely on the meteorite's composition, actually. For example, if you've got a nice nickel-iron ratio, you're probably good, but you're screwed if the thing had a high iron content. Insurance companies are usually very finicky about their falling extraterrestrial object damage coverage.
Workers compensation officer: How exactly did you get hurt?
Man: God smote me down
Boss: Don't mind Bob he's still a little shellshocked. He was struck by a meteorite. Or is that meteor. Was it a meteorite once it hit the roof or was it only a meteorite once it hit Bob?
Workers compensation officer: Well then if he can't even tell what hit him, we can't pay him can we?
Man: God smote me down, I tell you!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They may, but in doing so could demand possession of the meteorite.
The meteorite, depending on what's left of it and its composition, could easily be worth far more than the property damage.
A quality meteorite is akin to money raining from the sky. If a nice big one ever hits my property, the first thing I'd do is secure it and shop the meteorite to perspective buyers.
Ron
now that's some damn eloquent shit right there. give this man his Pulitzer.
"Will the town be renamed Smallville, NZ?"
No.
The Smallville part isn't necessary as it is in New Zealand.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
That's interesting. I guess they will have to find a shooting star collector if there is such a thing. I though these kind of disasters made people sick and caused serious unbalance if the meteor is big enough to screw with the balance of where it hits, the people of the town and the person that owned the building probably don't think of it as a blessing though at least not yet if what you are saying will happen that someone would actually pay money for it. I guess I am a cynic, I could see geologists studying it, not buying it.
There's a good market for them on eBay. Of course, unless it's an extremely large or rate meteorite, despite with GP said, it's unlike to be worth more than the property damage. Typical meteorites look to be going from around $10-50. The fact of the matter is, meteorites aren't very rare. OTOH, there's one current bid up to over $15 million right now. eBay search
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Honestly, I'd wait for the New Zealand Fire Service report before taking this seriously. All that the article says is that a warehouse caught fire in Auckland (not too unusual), and that people in Auckland saw a meteor and reckoned it "landed" somewhere near there. One person thinks he heard it crash with an exploding noise.
In short, some spectators are claiming a meteorite was involved in the fire, and the media's jumped on it because it makes the story more interesting. The NZ Herald seems to be the only news agency in New Zealand which I can find that's spinning the meteorite idea (actually the NZ Herald and Slashdot now that I've checked Google News). My guess is that it's just a coincidence that the fire started at roughly the same time.
People frequently see meteors in the sky and assume they can tell where the landed, even though most don't even land. People are nearly always wrong, and get confused by the perspective and brightness and distance which makes it look as if bright meteors are much closer than they are, and are heading much more steeply into the ground than they are.
Until the Fire Service comes out and states outright that it was a meteorite, and perhaps finds fragments, I'm not going to give the claim much credit. For a warehous fire in Auckland, it's more likely arson or an electrical fault.
I was on top of Mt Eden watching the fireworks display. Shortly after it ended was chatting with my friend when the meteor shot overhead - it was larger than anything I've ever seen in my life, the sky flashed as if a band of magnesium had been lit and the trail that it left behind remained illuminated for several minutes. We were goofing off when my friend spotted the blaze to the north, the same direction that the meteor had been going in. It was seriously the biggest fire in a city that I've ever witnessed and it was crazy seeing all of the fire engines racing out to it. We jumped in the car and headed over there. Just had to follow the huge plume of smoke, even in the dark. It was pretty much burnt out by the time we got there, although they were still dousing it with water and smoke/steam continued to pour out. While it seems unlikely it was the meteor, it was INSANE to see that big a fire, just minutes after that incredible meteor. Now I'm just waiting for the next volcano to spawn here. It's gonna happen sooner or later... (This city is SO much better than Toronto). ;)
I'm in Auckland, saw the meteor (which was awesome, BTW), and there's no way it hit anything or caused the fire. It was going totally in the wrong direction and it burned up well before the ground. In fact, it was probably so high that its trajectory would have taken it well out to sea.
This is just a classic case of people finding spurious links between unrelated events.
...they're often frozen on the surface when found right after the fall! It's a common myth that meteorites blazing hot. In reality, the molten surface of a meteorite has plenty of time to cool during the fall through cold atmosphere, and the interior of the meteorite remains very cold.
On behalf of all New Zealanders living outside of Auckland, why couldn't the meteorite have been a little bigger?
A meteor hits a warehouse...setting it on fire. This is the classic hypothetical example used when teaching the law of bailment in first year property class to law students.
What kind of warehouse I wonder? Did they hold on to their own goods only - or those belonging to others?
Every law student learns in first year property that a bailee of goods for hire is absolutely liable for them, even if the proverbial meteor falls from the sky and destroys them. That's the common law - and the over the top example literally used in the texts to make the point, too. And this happened in New Zealand - a common law country.
Problem is, the warehouse, if it is holding goods belonging to others, probably isn't insured for this. The insurer will claim Act of God. (And if "Act of God" is to mean anything in an insurance contract, it probably means a meteor). The warehouse owner will say "these goods not destroyed by a meteor - they were destroyed by fire, and we're insured for that".
The insurer will say "hell no; we're not paying." And off to court this will go.
Were the goods destroyed by a fire - or by a meteor? Because either way, the bailee is on the hook.
The resulting litigation answering that question will go down in the history books - and be subsequently learned by every law student in the common law world in their second month of law school - for the next several centuries.
.Robert
A poster upstream says that they were on "Mt Eden watching the fireworks display."
I bet some people were videoing that fireworks display and left their cameras on. They would be a good start to determining the meteors trajectory.
Frequently these people won't even know that they recorded the meteor's passing (it isn't what they were intending to capture, and they may not look at the tape past the end of the fireworks). But, you can bet that someone on Mt Eden recorded its passing. The local college astronomy department or one of the NZ astronomy clubs should issue a call for people watching the fireworks to search their tapes. If there were any major sporting events at the time, that would also be a useful source.
Remember, the camera doesn't have to be pointed at the sky. Capturing the time of the light flash, or the direction people are pointing, or the reflection of the meteor in windows or car hoods (bonnets) can be just as useful.
According to TV, three persons of minor importance work late in warehouses:
1) Janitors: expendable, first to die in alien invasions, zombie infestations, etcetera, the "canary in the coal mine" for unusual events.
2) Accountants: semi-expendable, often targets for bizzare assassination plots because they know too much.
3) Henchmen guarding illegal operation/loot: highly expendable. Usually die at the hands of an action hero.
Since the guy survived he's not a janitor, and the absent tell-tale trail of destruction confirms he's not a henchman either. So he must be an accountant, which means this wasn't simply a random meteor hit but an assassination attempt disguised as a meteor, a feat only possible my an evil mastermind with greater plans afoot.
This could mean the end of the world as we know it! PANIC!!!
Blank until
Meteorites cool off way before hitting the ground. They cool off during what is known as "Dark Flight". No meteorite lands hot. Period. Now maybe it struck something which then exploded but I highly doubt this story.
Warning: To those looking to read the comments on this story below, don't bother. 75% of the comments below this line are about their use of the word "casualty" and whether it refers to "deaths" or "deaths and wounded". After a huge discussion on it, we finally get a couple comments, but then a new thread picks right on up and people start talking about it again!
:(
There are very few interesting comments on this story.
Seriously, lamest first post ever. Some warehouse in New Zealand was just smitten SimCity style by a meteorite. Appreciate the epic-ness of the event.
I'm sorry, but I'd expect an article of this calibre out of an 9th-grade journalism class, not a newspaper that calls itself The Herald. For entertainment purposes, let's take a closer look at this story, shall we?
Fair enough. Big fires are kinda neat.
Wait, what? Appliances? Were they throwing dishwashers and blenders at it?
It's unclear from this sentence just when the firefighters were dampening down hotspots. Before the fire? After? A week later?
Here's where the real questions start. What what he doing in the building? Was he supposed to be there? How did he get the cut? Did he see/hear how the fire broke out? Isn't the whole point of journalism to answer questions? I would love to see an article that talks about why the author was unable to obtain the most basic facts about the story. Was the writer prevented from talking to the firefighters and police? Okay, that's a good reason but since it's not in the article I have to assume that the writer was just being lazy.
And by the way, what happened to the good old days when every article came with a by-line so you know who wrote it? You never see those any more unless the writer is gunning for a Pulitzer in some long, drawn-out investigative piece.
"...suspects the blaze was suspicious"? Oh now he/she isn't even trying.
And now we veer headlong into the bizarre. As others have pointed out, meteors are not nearly hot enough to start a fire by the time they reach the ground so unless the place was storing flammable materials, a meteor did not start this fire regardless of whatever random passers-by thought they witnessed. (It should be noted that their stories are contradictory, so it's impossible to tell which, if any of them, actually saw or heard the meteor. People routinely make up stories and observations to make their own lives seem more interesting or important, especially in relation to some semi-major happening nearby.)